Chapter 34 #2
Her voice trembled and her eyes kept darting back to me again and again.
Your room.
Quill pulled out the chair and sat down, a smile on her lips that stood in sharp contrast to the ink on her face, which resembled tear tracks.
“Professor Rydell is my mentor in the debates.”
“Debates you shouldn't even be allowed to participate in!” Lorette blurted out, and I flinched, as did Lara next to me, causing Lrette to raise her hand to her mouth in shock and look at me apologetically.
Quill raised both eyebrows defiantly.
“Stop me. Tell the world that I'm your husband's illegitimate daughter.” I couldn't help but blink. That was all my body was capable of. “An ugly stain on your picture-perfect family.”
Quill smiled and helped herself to some potatoes. Lorette's face drained of color, while Anthony still held his throat and now stared at Joseph.
“Anyway...” Quill poured butter over the asparagus and potatoes before reaching for Brittany's glass of champagne.
“Where was I? Oh, yes...” She emptied the glass into the vase of perfect white tulips before pouring herself some water.
“Professor Rydell seems to be almost part of this family.” She looked at me, took a sip, and leaned back with a thoughtful expression before looking at Joseph.
“And I thought it would only be fair for him to get to know all sides of this family.” One of her eyebrows lifted. “Right?”
“What the hell… happened to her neck…,” Tony blurted out of nowhere, his voice broken, his gaze filled with at least as much shock as was taking hold of my mind.
Lorette put her hand on his wrist, but he pulled his arm back sharply.
“Anthony...”
He ignored his mother, jumped up, and glared at Joseph as if he had the answer to the question echoing loudest in my head.
“What. Happened. To. Her. Neck?!”
Joseph didn’t respond, didn’t even look at him.
This was not the man who had saved me and my daughter from a life on the streets, who had given me advice on life, a family, and a future. There sat a stranger.
“Just a slip-up, right, Daddy?”
Quill's smile had something cunning about it, as if a fire were burning inside her. As if she were the star she had just spoken of.
Anthony slammed his fist on the table before swinging it toward his father.
Lorette immediately put both hands over her mouth, trying to grab her son's hand, but Tony was faster.
Joseph reflexively grabbed his son's wrist in midair, stopping him before turning his head toward him almost mechanically, his face expressionless.
“Have I ever raised my hand against you?”
Anthony pressed his lips together, his face red. His arm tensed and trembled.
“She's my sister!” he blurted out.
I searched Quill's expression for the truth, for signs that this was all a bad joke, but the Richters weren't known for jokes.
“Brittany is your sister.” Joseph sounded tense. “We are your family, not that parasitic outgrowth there, whom I can’t even look in the face anymore and whom you brought into our lives without asking.”
“Her neck...” Anthony started, but Joseph interrupted him.
“That would never have happened if you'd left her in the hole where she belongs.”
Tony froze too, clearly defenseless against words that couldn't possibly have come from the man I had looked up to for the last two decades.
Nothing made any sense right now.
Again and again, I searched Quill's eyes for answers, but she ignored me, watching Joseph as if he were a predator in a zoo, the long table between them a pane of glass.
The puzzle in my head was taking shape, but something inside me resisted putting the pieces together.
I must have missed something. Something here couldn't possibly be right.
I needed answers. Now.
“Joseph,” I began, my voice hoarse, almost warning. “What happened to her neck?”
“Davian,” Lorette smiled uneasily and stood up again, looking at Brittany. “Britt, honey, please take our guests to the living room for a moment until the situation between your siblings and your father has calmed down.”
“No.” I shook my head and looked at Joseph. “I'm not leaving until I know what this is all about.”
Now Quill looked at me, but she remained silent, letting the situation speak for itself, except that nothing about this situation made any sense.
Joseph looked away from Quill, and something remorseful and apologetic appeared in his eyes before he smiled calmly. It was a smile I knew from him, one that drove my confusion to a new peak.
“I apologize for this stressful situation. Would you please wait for me in my study?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
The uneasiness in my stomach was becoming more and more relentless.
“Now. I want to know now.”
“Davian.”
Something unfamiliar and warning infiltrated his voice, throwing me off balance and leaving me unsure of how to react.
“Would you please go to my study?”
It sounded like a question to which he would only accept one answer. And never before had I been so close to a boundary with him that it made me uncomfortable and uneasy to think about what would happen if I crossed it.
“I'll explain everything to you.”
Everyone was looking at me.
Something inside me didn't want to move, wanted to stare at Quill until she finally confirmed that this was all a misunderstanding and I was just slow on the uptake.
Unable to move, I felt something filling this room. An invisible bomb that had just exploded, its gas now gradually filling our lungs.
Poison.
She was the brightest star in the universe.
All the other stars envied her.
No one saw the explosion coming.
– Blue